It's not that weird, if you consider wasps as a living aspect of summoning even if it is a loose interpretation. Would make better sense if it boosted spells like regeneration but that would also be messy with the setup we have. Oh well.
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Strong people don't put others down. They lift them up.
-Darth Vader

Quote:Burying puppet master in summoning magic will not only make dark magic practically useless against the shooters, but will also make shooters rule the battlefield as they never did before.

??? How about frenzying the shooters themselves, they will attack the melee stack next to them and the whole stack gets decimated by the retaliation. Also since frenzy keeps them busy 2 turns, the hero has time to continue disabling the rest of the army with mass confusion or the 2nd shooter stack with blind. (or if puppet master stays, that will be an even more powerful 2nd move which is exactly why it is a balance issue)

Frenzy is excellent option for a mage with a big mana pool since its price will be 40 spell points and it can be resisted. Puppet can also be resisted, but if successful, it can offer effective blockade against melee range attack even if there are two shooters, and nice standard stack damage.

Frenzy is total overkill when unleashed in traditional mode with mage with sorcery skill. I suppose frenzy can also be overkill for non-mage classes if empathy perk kicks in and if hero has enough mana pool, but that does not represent tactical choice.

I'm not even arguing that part, nival design logic has issues on many levels That said I'm very happy with the base skill system they made. Magno's redesign and polish clearly shows its potential, too bad there are limits to what we can change.
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Strong people don't put others down. They lift them up.
-Darth Vader

magnomagus said:1. Move Puppet master to Summoning Magic level 5 with new icon
1. Restore Frenzy to its former IMBAness and have it replace puppet master at dark magic level 5.

Hmmm... this sounds interesting. To tell the truth, Dark is one of my favourite magic schools and after Frenzy has been nerfed, I have never used this spell. While I do not think PM fits Summoning very well, I can understand this move - Blind, Frenzy and PM is too much for one school. However, you could consider to leave PM in Dark and move Blind to Summoning. This way Dark magic would have two high level spells to manipulate enemies (Frenzy, PM) and Summoning magic would have three spells to disable enemy stacks (Wasp Swarm, Summon Hive, Blind).

Speaking of blind, it would also make sense in light. But as far as gameplay is concerned, it would fit in well with the controlling theme of summoning. It is hard to imagine frenzy or puppet in another school but blind is easier to justify. At any rate, I find gameplay more important than thematic coherency.
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Strong people don't put others down. They lift them up.
-Darth Vader

Small cosmetic changes make a lot of difference in how you perceive
these things, puppet master sounds too much voodoo, therefore the spell should be renamed to 'mind control' or 'hypnotize' together with changing the icon to eye in green background.

It is by the way interesting to note that Nival actually changed the name of the spell from hypnotize to puppet master to make it fit in dark. They seem to originally intended it to be placed in an order- or airlike school that changed to summoning later on.
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magnomagus said:
It is by the way interesting to note that Nival actually changed the name of the spell from hypnotize to puppet master to make it fit in dark. They seem to originally intended it to be placed in an order- or airlike school that changed to summoning later on.

Most of the original H5 spell names were the exact same as those we had in previous heroes so maybe that doesn't mean anything. I liked some of the new ones like deflect missile, vulnerability and puppet master but others were just cringeworthy. Circle of winter? Gah.
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Strong people don't put others down. They lift them up.
-Darth Vader

visual fx are even more telling than name changes, you can totally see endurance and righteous might were designed as stoneskin and bloodlust. Also puppet master has very bright fx, not really fitting in dark.
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For the one that are afraid that Might heroes with dark won't be able to counter Ranged PvE:
1. With current settings:
- Spell is too high tier to help early (or mid?) game -
Puppet is level 5 spell which requires a lot of resource investment to get there. This will happen not earlier that month 2.
Till then you handle archers in other ways anyway.
- Puppet Master cannot hold creatures for more than 1 turn - With the latest adjustments by magnomagus the spell base effect strength was reduced to such extent that there is the possibility that you wont be able to act with that creature if its ATB loading bar was almost empty when the spell was casted.

The idea of the new adjustment was that the higher the spellpower the larger the choice of enemy creatures to manipulate for the caster.

With those things said Might heroes cannot control ranged units for more than a turn.

2. With new settings (a.k.a. Frenzy goes to tier 5):
- Frenzy will always hold for 2 full unit turns where as a bonus if the archer is in range of its own allied units it will hit them and get retaliations. This is advantage for Might heroes.
- Frenzy costs twice more than puppet master which is the only drawback that comes with the change.

I agree with the change, I would just want to advise that Frenzy should be with the most negative value possible and have a good/great SP growth. This way Magic heroes will benefit from damage while might heroes will just use the manipulation effect.

Alright, I have one more suggestion born from out talk with Nargott.
Talking the WGE mod there the skill tree follow the old H5 ways where they are all very very strong but equally balanced (on paper). Same goes for the creature abilities.

One thing caught my eye though. the Charge ability there is made very very strong - 100% damage boost per square! Where champion base damage is reduced by a factor of 3 or 4. While this is very very strong iteration on the ability I would say that we can do something to a milder extent for our champs . Here are some points:

Retaliations of the champion will be weaker. So If anyone blocks him from moving, it will also cut down damage performance a.k.a. can create a blind spot for the champ.

Just to make it clear as I have not played the game for months and I am not really sure to what extent the current values make difference
on practice. The math behind jousting bonus is like this:

[(100% + 3.33%*passed_tile)*damage]*[100% + 3.33%*attack_points_more_that_defense] so if our champ passes 6 squares and hits he will get about 21% more damage that will be further amplified if he has higher attack.

same goes for Wind dancers. I did not think their ability is weak as "agility" will give +7 defense if they pass 7 tiles. This is about 21% defense increase. What bothers me is that they have 12 health and 9 growth.

On the other hand look at fortress T1 Shieldguards they have 12 health and 18 base growth and shield wall (and large shield).

The Agility ability is alright in paper but on practice you have way too few T2 to be able to use it properly as if you want actually to use it you have to charge them and they just die while Shield wall cuts 10% damage per square and in PvE you can actually benefit from the full potential of the ability without moving because the creatures tend to stop at their max speed range before clashing into your army.

I forgot they have 15 initiative and also this upgrade is made to stack with some defensive heroes like warden. Case closed.

P.S.

@Magno, for the sake of translators and skillwheel adjustments could you keep track of changes you do? or at least most of them.

"Talking the WGE mod there the skill tree follow the old H5 ways where they are all very very strong but equally balanced (on paper). Same goes for the creature abilities."

Creature abilities are balanced not only on paper, there were several multiplayer tournaments played with them.
But, this is important to understand, WGE battle has some specific features, as playing with very strong parameters and very strong abilities. Any mistake, any missed square may cost you to defeat, because there are many ways to critical increase damage dealt by powerful abilities of by powerful buffs or by powerful stats (and to decrease also).
But on the other hand, there is always time to reacting, because speed of creatures is drammatically decreased from 4-8 to 3-6 (except flyers). That's why 100% (one hundred percents) Charge is powerful, but it's difficult to deal this with rush on the first round (knightish basic speed is 5-6 and initiative is 7-9).
That's why you can't take ideas from WGE without adapting them to your metaplay.

Original Champions have speed of 8, one of the many primitive rush units. This is good idea about strong charge ability, but on the other hand this is bad idea about enforcing rush tactics. That's why it's neccessary to decrease basical damage compensating strong ability.
There are 2 variants:
1) -2-3 attack for 5% Charge (conservative but poor ability)
2) -20-25% damage for 10% Charge (strong tactical ability)

Nargott I didn't mean to offend. By on paper I mean that if you take the creature stats and abilities out of the tactical meaning they can seem unequal.

From what you explained in WGE the speed of the creatures play a huge role. Each creature have a significant benefit in certain area and disadvantage in other. For example soldiers have very low speed but are very tough and have high damage so it is not advisable to take them directly.

Griffins are very mobile but I assume they are easy to kill.
Champions rely heavily on their jousting bonus damage.